Opera Houses of the World. This item is unavailable.Opera Houses of the World

Renaissance Europe, with its humanistic impulse, may have brought the cathedral-building Middle Ages to an end, but it rechanneled the religious fervor of the old era into a new cult, the cult of opera, whose grandiose rites demanded theatres as monumental and as prominently placed as any cathedral ever built.
In Opera Houses of the World the musicologist Thierry Beauvert narrates in text and glorious image alike, the story of those fabulous buildings - the princes of the blood or of commerce who commissioned them, the architects who designed and decorated them, the composers who wrote for them, the golden-voiced singers who performed on their stages, and even the audiences who still attend performances like worshippers in sacred temples.

This large-format, illustration-driven book ushers the fortunate reader through a delightful tour of opera houses from Prague to Hanoi to Buenos Aires. Underscoring the presentation is the fact that opera certainly is not outdated; as witnessed here, construction of new houses and renovation of old ones are definite features of the contemporary international opera scene. Arrangement is by "type" of house, including early houses created to accommodate opera when it first appeared during the Renaissance, special ones built and maintained by royal patronage, magnificent municipal giants that set new standards in design and elegance, and contemporary houses fashioned with an eye to the future. Fine textual accompaniment imparts the history and primary features of each structure. Brad Hooper